What's your Method of Hiding? Part 2: Procrastination

Today I want to get stuck into part 2 of our series on methods of hiding and have a little look at procrastination.

Do you consider yourself a procrastinator. Do you always find something else to do instead of the thing you know you supposed to be doing? Do you find yourself faffing with peripheral stuff more than tackling the real needle moving tasks? Are you currently procrastinating by reading this? If you are – I want you to stay here. Procrastinate a bit longer, because I want to offer an alternative way of thinking about how we see procrastination and why we do it.

 I did a survey early on in 2022 with almost 100 female business owners about some of the ways they feel stuck, what they wish they had a magic wand for and over and over and over again, I read answers about time management and feeling like they were procrastinating.

And I totally get it. We live in a high functioning society where productivity is applauded and rewarded. We are conditioned to feel like we should be human doings instead of human beings and that narrative runs deep. And of COURSE with women being acutely aware of how scrutinised we still are in the workplace we feel compelled to always be on, be task and action oriented lest we let down the side.

There’s a level of shame that also surrounds the idea of procrastination – and that shame locks us into a cycle that can be hard to cycle out of. We shame ourselves for not tackling something, that shame isn’t motivating, we build the tasks up to be something huge because of the shame and continue to avoid.

Dr. Sirois, professor of psychology at the University of Sheffield has said.

“The thoughts we have about procrastination typically exacerbate our distress and stress, which contribute to further procrastination. But the momentary relief we feel when procrastinating is actually what makes the cycle especially vicious. In the immediate present, putting off a task provides relief — you’ve been rewarded for procrastinating.”

And we know from basic psychology that when we’re rewarded for something, we tend to want do it again. This is why procrastination tends to be a cycle, one that easily keeps us locked in shame.

 It occurs to me that when it comes to berating ourselves for what we might be calling ‘procrastinating’ there are actually a few more intricate things to consider and be self-aware about:

1)     Are you actually procrastinating? Or are you overworking?

2)     Are you actually procrastinating? Or are you overwhelmed?

3)     Are you actually procrastinating? Or are you feeling vulnerable about doing the work that might actually be true to you because it feels exposing and requires you to be visible?

Let’s look at each of these:

1)     Are you actually procrastinating? Or are you overworking?

It is fully possible that you are stalling or avoiding certain tasks because you are overworking. Might it be that you actually ARE tired and find the thought of a particular task really exhausting? Might it be that you have packed your schedule really full so other things that might help support you or that might move the needle are just not possible to get stuck into?

It really is possible that what you are viewing as procrastination might actually be a stress response to your workload. I want you to consider how much space you leave around tasks? How much margin do you give yourself to complete things? Are you asking a lot of yourself considering the other work you have going on? If the thing you are procrastinating on is going to require a lot of emotional or physical energy from you, would it not make sense to leave extra extra space for that instead of holding yourself to impossible standards of productivity? Just a thought you might want to consider before you shame yourself for not being productive. Rest is also productive. Rest is fuel.

2)     Are you actually procrastinating? Or are you overwhelmed?

Secondly – it’s worth considering - are you actually procrastinating or are you overwhelmed? Usually when we think of procrastinating we assume that there’s a bit of laziness happening but it’s very seldom that our procrastination looks like idleness. Usually we find something else to occupy our time (tidying our offices, clearing our laptop desktop etc) so it’s not that we are not doing things, we are often just choosing to do something else.

Dr. Tim Pychyl, professor of psychology and member of the Procrastination Research Group at Carleton University in Ottawa suggests that

“Procrastination is an emotion regulation problem, not a time management problem,”

It’s not a unique character flaw or a curse on your ability to manage time, but a way of coping with emotions and associations with certain tasks — overwhelm, boredom, anxiety, insecurity, frustration, resentment, self-doubt and beyond.

Which leads me to our third question to reflect on:

3)     Are you actually procrastinating? Or are you feeling vulnerable about doing work that might actually be true to you because it feels exposing and requires you to be visible?

When faced with a task that make us feel vulnerable, exposed or insecure, the amygdala — the “threat detector” part of the brain — perceives that task as a genuine threat, in this case it’s a thread to our self-esteem or sense of belonging or ego. Even if we know in our intellect that putting off the task will create more stress for ourselves in the future, our brains are still wired to be more concerned with removing the threat right now. Researchers call this “amygdala hijack.”

So procrastination becomes the thing we distract ourselves with in order to maintain that inner safety.

In all of this, at its core, procrastination is about emotions, not productivity or lack of ability or poor time management. The solution to feeling like you are always procrastinating isn’t in an app that blocks social media or in time-blocking or punishing ourselves. It is ultimately about managing our emotions in a new way.

If we want to look at how to manage our cycles of procrastination, we need to go deeper than the surface and think about self-forgiveness and compassion.

When we treat ourselves with kindness and understanding, particularly recognising that our brain is having a moment of vulnerability or is perceiving a threat to our ego, it allows for a much more self-supportive condition in which to move forward.

In fact, several studies show that self-compassion supports motivation and personal growth. Not only does it decrease psychological distress, which we now know is a primary culprit for procrastination, it also actively boosts motivation, enhances feelings of self-worth and fosters positive emotions like optimism, wisdom, curiosity and personal initiative. Best of all, self-compassion doesn’t require anything external of us — just a commitment to meeting your challenges with greater acceptance and kindness rather than shaming and berating ourselves.

I wonder how you can load more self-compassion and forgiveness into your week so you can truly move towards the things that you know are vulnerable but that might just lead to a fuller sense of personal fulfilment and impact.

Maybe this post is just what you needed to read in order to understand yourself more tenderly and what is behind the ways that you are hiding through procrastination.

As always, I’d love to hear how this topic lands for you. Feel free to reach out to me on email hello@melwiggins.com or in my DM’s on IG @melwiggins.

Ill be back with part 3 of this series on What’s Your Method of Hiding very soon.